ABSTRACT
The Russian World is by its nature a diaspora concept. It posits that Russians in the Motherland and in the near abroad and far abroad are linked together spiritually, culturally and (in terms of the Church) jurisdictionally. After 1991, there was impetus towards consolidation, in other words pulling the parishes and dioceses of the far abroad, such as Sourozh and Nice, into a cohesive whole. The problem was that the multiple jurisdictions of the Russian Church in the far abroad were not cohesive, but rather represented the various strands of the diaspora's history over the twentieth century. The ethos of Sourozh was different from that of ROCOR, which was different again from that of the Parisian Exarchate. The years immediately following 1917 saw an outpouring of books and articles on the meaning and destiny of Russia as émigrés struggled to come to terms with the cataclysmic events.
